Tag Archives: Hanley Ramirez

Greetings to the all the fantasy baseball folk, I’m back with another edition of the Fantasy Baseball Waiver wire! Unless you’re contending near the top of the standings in your fantasy baseball league, chances are that you’ve already begun to forget about the baseball season and are gearing up for a fantasy football draft deciding which quarterback is going to have the big breakout (I personally think Ryan Tannehill is going to be a fantasy gold). But if you’re still paying attention to your fantasy baseball team, there may be some players available on the waiver wire for you to snag to aid you in your run for the championship.

Last week’s recommendations didn’t go over so hot, but that’s largely a byproduct of the fact that I’ve already recommended a lot of the best waiver wire options in the past few weeks and I am trying to avoid any repeat mentions so I am scraping the bottom of the barrel here. However, in the recommendations below, I will have a couple of repeat mentions, but they are players who have yet to debut in the Majors. So first, let’s review last week’s recommendations (check out last week’s full article here) and we’ll give a new set of 6 hitters and 6 pitchers who could be useful to your fantasy squad.

***NOTE: To qualify as a waiver wire recommendation, a player must be owned in less than 50% of Yahoo and ESPN leagues and less than 60% of CBS leagues (players typically have higher ownership levels on CBS).Continue reading →

For the first time ever in his 13-year career, on the 4th of July, Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera has landed on the DL with a calf strain that he suffered as a base runner taking off from first to second base. The injury is expected to sideline Cabrera for 6 weeks. It’s nothing short of amazing how Cabrera has gone so long without ever incurring an injury that he was unable to play through, but he is now 32 years old and with this calf injury and the ankle injury that he played through for a good portion of the 2014 season, there appear to be some chinks in his armor at a time where we should be expecting him to exit his offensive prime anyway.

With his ankle injury last year, he still was able to hit .313 with 25 HR, 109 RBI, and 101 R, but remarkably, that was his lowest batting average since 2009 and his lowest HR total since 2006. This season he is batting what would be a career best of .350, but with just 15 HR before the injury, he was once again on pace for one of his lowest HR totals and with the injury, it’s all but guaranteed that it will be one of his worst HR outputs of his career.

Cabrera is still obviously a great hitter and he will have several more years left in the league where he will produce much better than the average player. But here is what I said about him in the pre-season rankings:

“You know how we saw the beginning of the decline of Albert Pujols in his age 31 season in 2011 when he “only” hit .299/.366/.541 with 37 HR, 99 RBI, and 105 R? Well, we saw something similar from M-Cab last year in his age 31 season. Perhaps it can be contributed to the bum foot that he was playing on, which has since been surgically repaired. Even so, there is a decent chance that he continues to experience an assortment of injuries as he is now on the wrong side of 30. So I’m pretty sure his best days are behind him, but of course he still is a better hitter than most of the league.”

So let’s go ahead and categorize this into the “assortment of injuries” column.

The Tigers will surely miss his bat, and it will be interesting to see how the offense responds to Cabrera’s absence. With J.D. Martinez so hot right now, it’s possible that he can shoulder the load to carry the team. But at some point, the Tigers offense should experience some rough times without Cabrera.

For fantasy squads, it’s nothing short of heartbreaking to lose a 1st round pick to the DL for a significant amount of time. First it was Giancarlo Stanton a couple weeks ago and now it’s Cabrera. Their production simply can’t be replicated, so you just have to make due with what you can.

Happy 4th of July! Eat a lot of BBQ, enjoy a lot of fireworks, but most importantly… watch a lot of baseball! Here are the notes from Friday’s games!

Jason Hammel – 7 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 5 K with the L. Hammel has pitched well enough to be an All-Star, but he’s not even the best pitcher on his own team (Jake Arreita) and it could be tough to send both, if any, Cubs pitchers to the All-Star Game. But Hammel got stuck with a loss on Friday despite pitching pretty well. He should be able to keep up a nice performance in the second half, but he will see a bit of regression in his .256 BABIP. He is 5-4 with a 2.89 ERA, 0.95 WHIP, and 104 K/18 BB in 102.2 IP. Continue reading →

As a 20-year old phenom, Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez took the baseball world by storm by earning the 2013 NL Rookie of the Year Award with a 12-6 record, 2.19 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, and 187 K/58 BB in 172.2 IP. Big things were expected of him in 2014 and he showed much of the same in 8 starts to begin the season with a 4-2 record, 2.44 ERA, 0.95 WHIP, and 70 K/13 BB in 51.2 IP. But after that 8th start, it was learned that he would have to undergo Tommy John surgery, breaking the hearts of fantasy owners around the nation and Marlins fans…errr, nowhere.

A few weeks ago, the Marlins tabbed July 2 as the date that the now 22-year old Fernandez would take the mound in a Major League game for the first time in nearly 14 months. And for the most part, his rehab went pretty well so it was expected that Fernandez would step right in and make an immediate impact for the Fish.

So the day finally came on Thursday in front of the home crowd and it didn’t get off to such a hot start as Fernandez gave up 3 hits and a sacrifice fly in the 1st inning to fall behind 2-0. However, he settled down after that to allow a total of 3 runs on 7 hits and 0 walks in 6 innings while striking out 6. He also helped his own cause by smashing his 2nd career HR off Matt Cain, and he admired it for a few seconds before beginning to round the bases, giving Cain a good glare as he rounded first base. Fernandez hit the upper 90’s on the radar gun multiple times, getting as high as 99 MPH, and his average fastball velocity was right in line with what it was before the Tommy John surgery, which is obviously a great indication that he’s feeling great.

What we need to watch for though is how his command and control are in the next few starts. Pitchers in their first year back from Tommy John surgery tend to struggle in that area, especially when it’s just around 12-14 months after their last Major League game (as opposed to the 19-20 months that Matt Harvey had). However, Fernandez had good control to begin with, so any possible struggle wouldn’t take away too much from his game.

For the rest of the season, I’ll give Fernandez a line of 6 W-3 L, 3.04 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, and 88 K/25 BB in 80 IP.

My pre-season love for Indians pitcher Carlos Carrasco was no secret as I tabbed him to be “This Year’s Corey Kluber,” but it just has not been happening for the 28-year old. Despite elite strikeout (9.85 K/9) and walk (1.93 BB/9) rates that were the big factors toward his great SIERA (2.89) and xFIP (2.85) entering Wednesday’s action, Carrasco was the owner of a mediocre 4.16 ERA and 1.22 WHIP. So he was hardly Kluber-izing the baseball nation and there is one key reason with a couple of causal secondary reasons that was preventing him from the big breakout.

The main reason that he’s been underwhelming and not meeting expectations this year lies in his BABIP (batting average on balls in play — measures the rate at which balls in the field of play go for hits), which sat at .336 coming into Wednesday. Then there are two reasons why his BABIP has been so high. The first reason being that his 32.8% hard hit rate entering the day was the 12th highest in baseball and much higher than his mark of 24.6% last season, which would suggest that he has been struggling with hitting his location a lot and the batters just mash it hard somewhere. The second reason why his BABIP has been so high is that the defense behind him rates very poorly as the 27th ranked team in both DEF and UZR. With a poor defense behind him, a pitcher is more likely to have a higher BABIP as balls get by defenders with lack of range, hits get by defenders because of the failure/misuse of a shift, or some combination of both. And this can be seen in more detail in “Sometimes A Pitcher Is Only As Good As His Defense.”

On Wednesday though, Carrasco finally had his big breakout game of the season where he came within one strike of completing a no-hitter before Joey Butler roped a single over the second baseman’s head that drove in a run for the Rays. Carrasco ended up being removed from the game after the hit since his pitch count was pretty high, but he finished the game with a spectacular line of 8.2 IP, 1 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 13 K with the W.

I think that Carrasco learned in order to avoid all the hits and high BABIP, he had to take things into his own hands and that the best way to combat having a bad defense is to just record a strikeout for half the outs to limit the defense’s opportunity to mess things up. And that’s what he did with exactly half of the 26 outs he got being of the strikeout variety. The 1-hit performance brought Carrasco’s BABIP down from .336 to .323. Carrasco figures to continue to improve his overall numbers over the second half of the season and be a fantasy asset, but it may not be to the extent that we hope for if he keeps on getting some bad defense behind him. Carrasco is now 10-6 with a 3.88 ERA, 1.14 WHIP, and 110 K/21 BB in 97.1 IP.

Of course that is none other than everyone’s favorite sex trafficking classic Taken, starring Liam Neeson who brings some serious badass-ery as ex-government agent Bryan Mills. But on a day that Blue Jays pitcher Marco Estrada flirted with perfection, we all weren’t Marco, but rather we all wanted Marco who is just 13% owned in Yahoo fantasy leagues at the time of writing this post.

If you recall, Estrada also took a no-hitter into the 8th inning of his previous start against the Orioles before giving up a hit and a run in that 8th inning. In his start on Wednesday at Tampa Bay, he was perfect through 22 batters after Josh Donaldson made one of the top plays that we will see this season, full on diving into the stands along the third base line to catch a foul ball. The very next batter then hit a soft dribbler to Donaldson at third base and he charged in on it, barehand grabbed it, and then fired it over to first base, but the runner beat the throw by the slimmest of margins to break up the perfect game and the no-hitter. Estrada went on to pitch 8.2 shutout innings, allowing 2 hits and no walks while striking out 10. However, he was unfortunate to not come away with the victory as his offense could not muster any runs while he was still in the game.

With the amazing effort of near perfection, Estrada now has a 3.45 ERA, 1.10 WHIP, and 63 K/23 BB in 73 IP. His ownership level in season long fantasy leagues is sure to skyrocket, but is it worth it to pick him up? The quick answer is yes it is worth it as long as you’re not dropping anyone of value, because there is little harm in picking up players who are hot. But you have to know what kind of player that he is so that your expectations are kept in check.

Estrada has been around the league for several years now and he’s always been a pitcher to post ERA’s that are higher than his SIERA because of the fact that he is one of the more extreme fly ball pitchers in the league and gives up a lot of home runs. In fact, he led the league last year in HR allowed with 29 despite having only pitched 150.2 innings. However, he has always had the knack for posting above average strikeout rates and walk rates with career marks now at 8.37 K/9 and 2.46 BB/9. Estrada is at his best when he is locating his changeup well, because that is his bread and butter pitch. It is also a pitch that he is throwing at a career high rate this season, upwards of 32.0% of the time, so he seems to be having a good feel for it.

It was expected that with Estrada joining the AL East after spending his whole career in the NL that he would become even more homer prone and would see a downtick in his strikeout rate. Well so far, his strikeout rate is down from his career rate, but he is actually managing a career best HR allowed rate at the moment, which is the primary reason for his success this season. If he can keep preventing the long ball then he is going to have a good chance to put up a career best season. However, it is tough to say if he will be able to do so or not. I would lean towards him not doing so because of the division that he pitches in, so he could see an inflation in his numbers soon. But even so, he should be a positive contributor in WHIP without hurting the ERA too much, and also chipping in a decent amount of strikeouts. If you need the pitching help then I think that it is okay to grab Estrada, but just know that he will have starts where he just gets pounded by the long ball.

J.D. Martinez spent parts of three seasons on the Major League squad for the Astros and he never was able to compile a full season of success. The Astros then released him before the start of the 2014 season and the Tigers picked him up and he ended up breaking out for a real surprise season with a .315 AVG, 23 HR, 76 RBI, 57 R, and 6 SB in 123 games. Martinez was able to complete this transformation and breakout by completely retooling the mechanics of his whole swing, and it’s always nice to know that there are actual tangible reasons as to why a player finally has a breakout season. The high batting average of .300 wasn’t necessarily going to be there this season given that his .315 AVG from last year was driven by a likely unsustainable .389 BABIP, but it was reasonable to expect that this season he would be able to put up similar power production with the maintaining of his new swing mechanics.

After a month of the 2015 season, Martinez was hitting just .216 on May 8 but the 6 HR that he had at that point were respectable. The culprit of the low batting average was the fact that his BABIP was much lower than last season (which was expected) and he was also striking out at a much higher rate. However, over the last couple weeks, Martinez has really trimmed down his strikeout rate to a nearly identical mark that he was at last season. With the decrease in strikeouts, Martinez’ batting average has gone up a lot and now sits at .275 after his big day on Sunday, and his .325 BABIP is a much more realistic mark to suggest that this could be the area in AVG that he finishes the season with.

His game on Sunday consisted of a 3 HR and 6 RBI performance to give him 16 HR and 41 RBI for the season so far to put him on pace to do even better than last year in those areas. Also, his ISO is now up to .240, which is right in line with his last year’s mark of .238 to further prove that his power is legitimate and for real. The triple dong outburst from Sunday has me believing that the J.D. stands for Just Dongs. Expect to see him continue his power stroke as the season goes on, and he makes for a good play as a part of a Tigers offense that can do very dangerous things.

After being scored upon in 9 of his last 13 appearances and collecting 2 blown saves and 2 losses in the process, Fernando Rodney was not the arm called upon on Saturday evening to protect a lead in the 9th inning for the Mariners. Instead, manager Lloyd McClendon turned to the youngster Carson Smith who had no issues with a clean inning of work with one strikeout to earn the first save of his career.

I have been singing this tune for weeks now as reported in detail on May 23 in “BLOW-PEN Report: Fernando Rodney and His Broken Arrow,” and even before that I issued some tidbits on the situation. Rodney just has been horrible this season and it was only a matter of time before Smith was given a chance to close out a game. However, unlike the situations in Miami and Texas that I also reported on in the BLOW-PEN Report before those closer situations changed, I think that Rodney will get a chance to try and prove himself again. The fact that McClendon stuck with Rodney for so long in his time of struggle suggests to me that he really prefers Rodney as his closer and/or does not think that Smith is prepared to be thrusted into that role full-time in just his first full season in the Majors. And as I suggested in the BLOW-PEN Report, it could be a case of Rodney tipping his pitches, which is something that would be fixable if that’s what the ultimate issue is. But whether or not Rodney does work out the kinks to earn his manager’s trust back is certainly far from likelihood.

For now, I think that Rodney will see one of the next save opportunities and if he does well then he will continue to see more until he blows another. But obviously Smith needs to be picked up in all league formats as he has very dominant stuff to be very successful as a Major League closer. If not right now, then Smith should assume the role as closer for the Mariners later this summer when Rodney could possibly get traded if the Mariners are not in contention, or the beginning of next year. So for keeper and dynasty leagues, he should have been grabbed a while ago.

***For clarification, from what I’ve gathered, “Bour” is pronounced the same as “bore” or “boar.” Not pronounced the same as “Bauer.”

So maybe Marlins first baseman Justin Bour is portly shaped like a boar at 6’4″/250 lbs., but he is proving to be far from a bore as he began to see some regular playing time even before Mike Morse landed on the DL. But now that Morse is on the DL, the first base job would appear to be Bour’s to runaway with, and so far so good for the 27-year old left-handed slugger.

Consider this: Bour now has 4 HR on the season and the pitchers he has taken deep are Jordan Zimmermann, Brad Brach, Gerrit Cole, and now Matt Harvey after Friday’s bomb that proved to be the game winner for the Marlins. That’s 3 of the top starting pitchers in the National League and also pitchers that do not allow a whole lot of home runs. He is now hitting .361 with 4 HR, and 9 RBI in 61 AB.

I’ve been talking about Bour and his power potential for a few days now, and he really needs to be owned in more leagues. Yes, he’s not going to hit in the high .300’s, and chances are that he won’t even hit anywhere above .300, but Bour is a hitter who has never shown any significant propensity to striking out. His Minor League career strikeout rate is a respectable 17.5% and he never once struck out at a 20% clip at any stop in the Minors. In limited action last year with the Marlins, he did strikeout 22.9% of the time, but this season in 14 games at AAA he struck out just 9.7% of the time. And in his time in the Majors so far this season, he is at a very nice 15.2% mark. So he does appear to have a greater feel for the strike zone than most hitters that carry his type of power potential, which is a big plus when mining for up and coming power hitters.

About that power potential, Bour’s yearly best total in his professional career was 23 HR at high-A ball in 2011. But in 2013 and 2014 at AA and AAA, Bour’s HR per AB rate was 1 HR every 19.5 AB. And now at 27 years old, Bour should be entering his prime where his power potential could achieve new levels. Bour may not see regular playing time against left-handed pitching in his first extended go-round in the Majors, but he is looking like a very nice play against righties at the very least, as he is being inserted into the cleanup role right behind Giancarlo Stanton.

So if you are in the need of some power then it wouldn’t hurt to give Bour a go, as he likely won’t kill your team in AVG either. I would think of him along the same lines of Adam Lind.

With the Red Sox far out of playoff contention last season as the trade deadline approached, they shipped Andrew Miller, who was set to become a free agent, to their division rivals, the Baltimore Orioles, for left-handed pitching prospect Eduardo Rodriguez. In order for the Red Sox to deal Miller to the Orioles, they would only accept Rodriguez in any deal and on Thursday we got a glimpse of why the Red Sox were so adamant in getting him. Making his Major League debut, Rodriguez went 7.2 scoreless innings, allowing just 3 hits and 2 walks while striking out 7 Rangers batters.

Rodriguez spent all of 2014 in AA where he had a 4.05 ERA, 1.31 WHIP, 8.10 K/9, and 2.77 BB/9 in 120 IP. Those weren’t the greatest of numbers, but for a 21-year old at AA, he surely held his own. But what’s not seen in those numbers is how he began to really thrive once he did get traded over to the Red Sox organization, as he had a 0.96 ERA, 1.02 WHIP, 9.40 K/9 and 1.93 BB/9 after the trade.

Before being called up for this start on Thursday, Rodriguez had been pitching at AAA where he had a 2.98 ERA and 1.10 WHIP in 48.1 IP while displaying that same nice blend of strikeout potential (8.19 K/9) and excellent control (1.30 BB/9) that he had at AA for the Red Sox last year.

A lot of the pitching prospects that get hyped up seem to be high strikeout guys who have battled control issues such as Taijuan Walker, Archie Bradley, and Carlos Rodon, and the problem with those types of pitching prospects is that they do not usually have immediate success in the Majors. Sure they will have an occasional dazzling game, but overall they just often have a mixed bag of results. But then you get someone who comes along like Noah Syndergaard who never has dealt with control issues who can come along and be successful on a much more consistent basis right away in the Majors.

Rodriguez would seem to be more in the vein of Syndergaard than those other young arms thanks to his great control, and he could have a shot at some early success as a Major Leaguer. He’s not as strikeout dominant as Syndergaard, but there is a lot to like about him. Watching his start on Thursday, he was very efficient with his pitch count, throwing a lot of strikes and working in and right around the zone, and he seemed especially tough on the Rangers left-handed bats. He’s still a very young pitcher though, so he’s most likely going to run into some struggles, but out of rookie pitchers I do value the type of control that he can bring.

But what remains to be seen is whether or not he sticks in the Red Sox rotation. His start on Thursday was supposed to be nothing more than a spot start, but the Red Sox have dealt with some big time issues on the pitching front. There’s not really one of their starting pitchers who has had a good season, but the name that comes to mind when talking about Rodriguez potentially replacing someone is Joe Kelly. If the Red Sox are serious about contending this year, then they have to give some long thought to putting Rodriguez in the rotation for good.

For fantasy purposes, Rodriguez would have immediate value if he is inserted into the rotation for a longer look and I definitely would recommend him as someone to pick up.

Before I delve into the fantasy baseball strategy talk, let me take you back to September of 2014 when I discovered a television show on the FYI channel called Tiny House Nation hosted by John Weisbarth, a San Diego sports broadcaster and former host of Yahoo Fantasy Football Live, and Zack Giffin, a tiny house expert and builder. If you don’t know what Tiny House Nation is or what tiny houses are all about, you are missing out! As John Weisbarth proclaims in the opening of the show, “Tiny homes are the next big thing!”

I’ll give you a brief insight into what tiny houses are and then show you how it relates to fantasy baseball. The tiny house movement is a social phenomena where people are downsizing the space that they live in (to houses less than 600 square feet in size), and subsequently pairing down their belongings as well, to enjoy a more simplified way of life, often influenced by environmental and/or financial concerns, or just to have more freedom from the materialistic things in life. But in order to accomplish the design of these homes and to live efficiently, there is one keyword that is incredibly important within the tiny house community, and that word is multi-functionality.

With pieces of furniture or parts of the home that are multi-functional in tiny houses, the use of the limited space is maximized for a high level of efficiency, allowing for many of the same conveniences and amenities that a traditional home may have the space for. In fantasy baseball, I believe that multi-functionality is also a very important thing to have. With multi-functional players, a fantasy baseball team owner is able to maximize the efficient use of a roster. What I mean by a multi-functional player is a player that is eligible to fill more than one position on a fantasy roster.

Let’s first take a look out how multi-functionality comes into play with hitters on a fantasy baseball team and then we will examine how it helps with pitchers. Continue reading →

Let me first start by congratulating Andrew Cashner on a ridiculously awesome mullet. It suits him well. I’ve been known to grow out my hair pretty long in a mullet type fashion in the back, but I could never in my wildest dreams make it look as stylishly good as his.

Ever since Cashner came over to the Padres and became a full-time starting pitcher, he has to be one of the unluckiest pitchers when it comes to wins and losses, if not the unluckiest. In 2013 Cashner squeaked over the .500 mark with a 10-9 record off of a 3.09 ERA in 31 games (26 starts), and last year he went just 5-7 in 19 starts despite having a superb 2.55 ERA. Those seasons of mediocre win/loss records despite the sparkling ERA’s were surely attributed to pitching for a Padres team that had the 24th worst run scoring offense in the Majors in 2013 and the absolute worst in 2014.

On Friday night against the Dodgers, Cashner pitched 6 innings of quality baseball where he gave up one unearned run on 5 hits and 1 walk while striking out 3. However, he was once again unable to come away with one for the W column and was handed a no-decision. Cashner’s ERA improved to 2.89 and his WHIP to 1.27, but his record of 1-7 definitely does not reflect anything resembling what it should for a pitcher with his stats.

But what happened? The Padres offense was supposed to be vastly improved by adding guys in the off-season like Justin Upton, Matt Kemp, Wil Myers, Derek Norris, and Will Middlebrooks, so they must all be flaming out as disappointments, right? Well, not exactly actually. Upton, Myers, and Norris have all been enjoying good seasons, and the Padres are actually 11th in the Majors in run scored and have been the beneficiaries of their home field Petco Park turning into a launching pad of sorts.

When Cashner has taken the hill, his offense has only averaged 2.00 runs per game, and in 6 of his 9 starts, the offense has scored 2 runs or less. For comparison, his teammate James Shields has received at least 3 runs of support in all of his starts for 5.33 runs on average, and other teammate Tyson Ross has received 4.33 runs of support in his starts. So it’s not that he has been pitching for a team with a horrendous offense like in years past, he has just had the misfortune of his offense being powerless specifically in the games that he has started. He has been matched up versus the likes of Max Scherzer, Dallas Keuchel, JonLester,and Zack Greinke (twice), but he’s also opposed Brandon McCarthy, Ryan Vogelsong, Rubby De La Rosa, and Daniel Hudson. So the 2.00 runs of support per game are hardly excusable.

With an increase in slider usage from 15.9% last year to 19.9% this year, Cashner is striking out a lot more batters this season with nearly a +2.00 K/9 bump up to 8.68 K/9. The swinging strike rate that Cashner is inducing supports the increase in strikeouts as well, as it is up from 8.0% last year to 9.9% this year, and a large portion of that is from the slider. However, he has been a victim of the weird, inexplicable transformation of Petco Park into a more hitter friendly park that I alluded to earlier. He is allowing 1.29 HR/9 on a 14.3% HR/fly ball rate. That’s not something that is likely to continue as he has been very good at limiting the long ball regardless of where he has pitched (0.75 HR/9 on the road in 2013-14).

I think that Cashner is a good candidate that you may want to try and buy and cash in with him. By all metric systems, Cashner is pitching the best that he ever has since becoming a full-time starting pitcher and the win/loss record is a fluke that the Cashner owner in your league may not realize or just something they are getting tired of dealing with. It’s a very optimistic sign that he is striking out more batters, and with a legitimate reason that he is doing so (the slider). Things will turn around for him soon.

The reigning AL Cy Young, Corey“the Klubot” Kluber had been on the wrong end of some hit parades over the course of his first 7 starts of the 2015 season, which led him to an 0-5 record with a 5.04 ERA and 1.39 WHIP. Given that his breakout 2014 performance kind of came out of nowhere (though there were signs that he had breakout potential), fantasy owners of Kluber were chomping at the bit to get rid of him. Yes, it is unfortunate for anyone who owns/owned Kluber that they had to endure such an ugly stretch, but a closer examination of what was really going on showed that there really was never any real reason to worry.

Heading into Wednesday’s action, Kluber had a .364 BABIP and 62.3% strand rate, both of which were way worse than the league average and they were numbers to expect to regress towards the mean. Though his ERA was bloated at 5.04, his xFIP was 3.16 and his SIERA was 3.21. xFIP and SIERA are far more accurate measures of what a pitcher’s “true” performance is, and for Kluber’s marks to have been nearly two whole runs beneath his ERA, it was an obvious sign of things to come. Then add in the fact that his normal catcher, Yan Gomes who is known to be a great game caller with excellent framing metrics, got injured within the first week of the season, and his impending return in a couple weeks was more reason to believe in Kluber.

With that being said, the Klubot emerged on Wednesday to hurl one of the most dazzling games of this millennium. Outside of a bean ball on Matt Holliday early in the game and a 7th inning single given up to Jhonny “don’t spell it Johnny” Peralta, Kluber was perfect. At the end of 8 innings, Kluber had tallied 18 strikeouts on 113 pitches. I really think that Kluber should have came out for the 9th inning to be given the opportunity to get to 20 strikeouts, or even 21 to set a new record, especially with the ugly way that Indians closer Cody Allen has been pitching. However, possibly playing a part in the decision of Kluber coming out of the game was the fact that manager Terry Francona was ejected earlier in the game and the acting manager for the Indians wanted to be cautious and not get in trouble with anyone for leaving Kluber out there too long. Whatever the case, the Klubot mystified Cardinals hitters all game long and effectively reversed any doubts that any fantasy owners may have had.

Kluber improved to 1-5 with a 4.27 ERA, 1.20 WHIP, and 64 K/11 BB in 52.2 IP. From here on out, those numbers should keep on improving. The window to buy low on Kluber has officially closed, and this has been your lesson in Klubotics.

Stephen Strasburg pitched at Arizona on Tuesday night and was handed a beat down in one of the worst outings of his career as he only lasted 3.1 IP while allowing 8 runs (7 ER). On the season, Strasburg is now 2-4 with a 6.06 ERA, 1.71 WHIP, and 35 K/11 BB in 35.2 IP.

I am not sure what exactly is the cause of his putrid performance, but clearly he isn’t doing much right. Strasburg did leave his previous start with some shoulder irritation, so maybe that played a part in Tuesday’s nightmare, but he hadn’t exactly been sharp in his 6 starts before Tuesday either. Yeah, he has an incredibly high .398 BABIP and a horrible 60.2% strand rate, but there comes a point where you examine things and just have to say that perhaps he is creating his own bad luck.

There’s not much in his velocity or pitch selection that jumps out in a negative light, besides the fact that his velocity on his fastball has been down 0.4 MPH from last year, but that’s not that great of a difference to think that it is the primary factor in his awful season thus far. But examining his plate discipline numbers, there are a few stats that stand out (the following stats do not include data from Tuesday night’s game). First, hitters have been making contact off Strasburg at a rate (84.3%) that is way higher than his career rate (75.9%). Coincidentally, Strasburg also has been inducing swinging strikes at a rate (7.0%) that is much lower than his career rate (10.9%). Next, Strasburg is throwing pitches in the strike zone way more than usual (54.2% this year vs. 45.3% career). And then Strasburg is getting much fewer swings on pitches out of the zone (28.0% this year vs. 32.8% career) and when hitters are swinging on pitches out of the zone, they are making contact on them a lot (73.2% this year vs. 60.0% career). To me, all this data would suggest that he is creating his own bad luck by just grooving a lot of pitches that batters can easily handle since he is working within the strike zone so much more than he has in the past. The plummeting swinging strike rate though is a big concern and possibly could be indicative of just losing his stuff so to speak.

Another possible explanation could be he has been pitching with an injury all along, even before the previous start that he left with shoulder irritation. A possible injury could cause loss of command of pitches, which leads to the pitch grooving. Also remember that Strasburg did undergo Tommy John surgery in August of 2010, and somewhere I read that the average threshold for a pitcher to have to undergo Tommy John surgery a second time is around 650 innings pitched. Now I am not sure where I read that or what statistical analysis was used to back up that claim, but I know that I did read it. So if we want to believe that, Strasburg has now pitched 637.1 innings since his Tommy John surgery. Perhaps he is due for another surgery, or perhaps it is something else. Either way, something is not right for Strasburg and he could be in for a long season.

It is shortstop edition time of “Year to Date.” One of the top shortstops, who is also a huge headache to own due to his fragility, Troy Tulowitzki, is not off to a great start but he is hitting near .300 so he’s not quite a super disappointment and I am sure he will get it going soon as long as he can stay on the field. But there are some other big busts so far at the shortstop position, as well as some unlikely names finding themselves in the current top 5 of the shortstop rankings. Let’s take a look.

SHORTSTOPS

Surprises: Adeiny Hechavarria, Zack Cozart, Marcus Semien

Hechavarria of the Marlins seems like just about the most unlikely of pre-season shortstop starters to find himself as the #2 ranked shortstop on Yahoo behind the great Hanley Ramirez. Hechavarria is hitting .315 with 2 HR, 17 RBI, 18 R, and 1 SB through 29 games while hitting 8th for the Marlins. This fast start now has him 76% owned in Yahoo leagues, which is 4% more than Jean Segura. Hechavarria as the #8 hitter on the Marlins has no business being higher owned than Segura who is hitting 1st/2nd for the Brewers and is actually bouncing back pretty well from his nightmare 2014 performance that was plagued with tragedy. Hechavarria is a light hitter with not as much speed as you would expect and nearly everything in his batter profile suggests that he is going to tail off and be waiver wire fodder. His walk rate is down and his strikeout rate is up. His line drive rate is down to a mostly unimpressive 18.4% while his infield fly ball rate is high at 14.8%. Also, his infield hit rate is down to 4.5%, which is a couple points below his career mark. So the fact that he has a very high .372 BABIP when all these trends would suggest otherwise, it is quite confusing. At best Hechavarria is a .270/5 HR/10 SB guy. Continue reading →